To offer video playback from a web site, there are still a few years. We did not necessarily have much choice, if we wanted to reach as many users as possible: it was necessary to pass through Flash. However, HTML5 allows playback of video and is now sufficiently deployed across different browsers on the market to allow us to use it, and that’s what YouTube did.

YouTube now distributes its default video in HTML5, considering that the performance of this open standard is now waiting for you. Bad news for Adobe.

In fact, YouTube has already happened in HTML5 there about it several years with a reader that it was possible to activate by visiting a certain site page. However, the well-known streaming service has just announced a big change.

So if you have a compatible browser, and there is a good chance that this is the case, then you will not have to visit an obscure page to enable the HTML5 player since it will be there by default.

Why YouTube has waited a while before proposing this, is the Adaptive Bitrate which was not supported by HTML5, but possible to reduce the loading time video. Now it is supported, YouTube is therefore heart’s content and forgets Flash.

More than ever, therefore, YouTube encourages those who publish content on the web to go through the iframe to embed a YouTube video, which allows to use the HTML5 player: thanks to this, browsers do not support the Flash can play the video, like this may be the case for mobile, for example.

YouTube’s interest in HTML5 not new. Support back in 2010, engineers liked the prospect of having an open standard for video, but the performances were not sufficient. This is no longer the case today, and thanks to the functionality of the Adaptive Bitrate (ABR). This allows you to adjust on the fly resolution and bit rate depending on network traffic. According to YouTube, ABR has reduced the buffering 50 to 80%, significantly reducing unwanted stops reading. It also allows achieve “live streams on game consoles Xbox and PS4, devices like Chrome cast and in web browsers,” says YouTube engineering manager Richard Leider in a blog note.

The support of the open VP9 codec HTML5 was also crucial because it allows better video quality for lower bandwidth and opens the door to the spread of 4K video. Finally, HTML5 now offers effective tools to protect the rights of authors, which was not the case there are still a few years. All these reasons led the subsidiary of Google to switch to HTML5 default on leading browsers, including Chrome, IE11, Safari 8 and beta versions of Firefox.